James McVay: Keep comments after arrest for murder from jury

Jul. 25, 2013

James McVay walks to court Thursday. / Jay Pickthorn / Argus Leader

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After insisting during interviews from jail that he’d be put to death for the brutal 2011 murder of a 75-year-old Sioux Falls woman, James McVay now wants to keep the jury that decides his fate from hearing those remarks.

The 43-year-old McVay said through lawyers Thursday that some of the inflammatory statements were made while he was sleep-deprived and under the influence of crack cocaine and alcohol, and that all of them were influenced by his psychosis.

McVay pleaded guilty but mentally ill to first-degree murder in the July 2011 stabbing death of Maybelle Schein. A jury will decide whether he gets a sentence of life in prison or death by lethal injection.

McVay’s recent attempt to avoid a death sentence runs counter to his stated objective the day he killed Schein in her bed. After he was arrested in Schein’s car near Madison, Wis., he told two officers he wanted to do whatever he could to fast-track a death sentence.

“I’m really trying to work this in a way so you guys will be able to get me the death sentence, and I won’t appeal it or anything like that,” McVay said from jail the day after the murder, according to recordings played Thursday during the first day of a two-day suppression hearing.

'Easiest interview I've ever done'

From jail, McVay blamed the South Dakota Department of Corrections for Schein’s death because they allowed him to get out despite his psychosis. After spending two months in a prison cell alone for disciplinary reasons, he had been placed in a minimum-security unit and walked away just hours before the murder.

In the hours and days after his arrest, he offered dozens of unsolicited statements about how he’d murdered the woman and stolen her car in a plot to steal and kill his way to Washington, D.C., where he wanted to assassinate President Obama on a golf course.

During the recordings, McVay repeatedly used a racial slur in reference to Obama; said he was happy to have killed a Christian; claimed to be the son of Lucifer; and admitted to struggling with mental illness, but flatly denied that his psychosis contributed to the crime.

Detective Jessica Speckmeier of the Sioux Falls Police Department, who spoke with McVay the day after the murder, called it “the easiest interview I’ve ever done.”

He told her he was ready to kill anyone who caught him shoplifting from a Sioux Falls Walmart the day before the murder and said he’d hoped to kill a man at Target for his Corvette.

He also told Speckmeier he’d intended to kill a police officer in Madison but “unfortunately, I let my addiction get a hold of me,” and he sought out crack cocaine instead.

He told Speckmeier he’d contemplated killing the young man he found to buy drugs from, but decided against it, “because what good would that do?”

Defense: Statements not voluntary

McVay had told not only police officers about the murder and assassination plot but also a Madison TV reporter.

His lawyers in Sioux Falls now say their client’s mental state and ingestion of myriad substances leading up to the arrest demonstrate that his statements were not voluntary.

“He could not weigh the cost and benefits of the statements he was making due to his psychosis,” said Minnehaha County Public Defender Traci Smith.

Smith said McVay had been awake for 36 hours by the time he spoke to officers and had consumed a great deal of alcohol and over-the-counter cough medicine.

But Minnehaha County State’s Attorney Aaron McGowan told Judge Peter Lieberman that there was no proof that McVay’s statements were anything but voluntary. He made many of the statements without being asked, and continued speaking after being read his Miranda warnings.

McGowan also pointed to the fact that McVay appeared calm, lucid and articulate through each of his interactions.

“There is no indication of any psychosis,” McGowan said.

The Wisconsin officers who arrested McVay in Schein’s car testified Thursday that he sat still and turned up a Pink Floyd song, waiting for them to pull him out of the car.

“It made the hairs on the back of your neck rise,” Madison Police Sgt. Jason Ostrenga said.

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Once he was in the back of a police cruiser and given his glasses by another officer, however, McVay said he’d “tell him anything he wanted to know,” officer Kipp Hartman testified.

“He told me I was going to find everything out, that he’d murdered a woman in Sioux Falls, South Dakota,” Hartman said.

McVay proceeded to tell Hartman the details about the murder, and Hartman stopped him at one point to read him his Miranda warnings against self-incrimination.

“I just want you to understand you’re under arrest at this point,” Hartman said.

“Yeah, I know that, man,” McVay told him.

McVay spoke about his surprise at how much blood the human body has, and that Schein’s family had been trying to contact him through the stolen car’s GPS system.

“He asked me to get in contact with the victim’s family to let them know she was murdered and that he did it,” Hartman said.

McVay elaborated about his crime and how it made him feel: “I’ll probably murder again. And next time, it will be worse. You wanna know why? Because now I know there is no God. If you put me in jail, I’ll probably kill inmates.”